DESCRIPTION

This page summarizes variables provided by the curses library's
low-level terminfo interface.
A more complete description is given in the curs_terminfo(3X) manual page.

Depending on the configuration, these may be actual variables,
or macros (see curs_threads(3X))
which provide read-only access to curses's state.
In either case, applications should treat them as read-only to avoid
confusing the library.

Alternate Character Set Mapping

After initializing the curses or terminfo interfaces,
the acs_map array holds information used to translate cells
with the A_ALTCHARSET video attribute into line-drawing characters.

The encoding of the information in this array has changed periodically.
Application developers need only know that it is used for the "ACS_"
constants in <curses.h>.

The comparable data for the wide-character library is a private variable.

Current Terminal Data

After initializing the curses or terminfo interfaces,
the cur_term contains data describing the current terminal.
This variable is also set as a side-effect of set_term(3X)
and delscreen(3X).

It is possible to save a value of cur_term for subsequent
use as a parameter to set_term, for switching between screens.
Alternatively, one can save the return value from newterm
or setupterm to reuse in set_term.

Terminfo Names

The tic(1) and infocmp(1) programs use lookup tables for
the long and short names of terminfo capabilities,
as well as the corresponding names for termcap capabilities.
These are available to other applications,
although the hash-tables used by
the terminfo and termcap functions are not available.

The long terminfo capability names use a "l" (ell) in their names:
boolfnames,
numfnames, and
strfnames.

These are the short names for terminfo capabilities:
boolnames,
numnames, and
strnames.

These are the corresponding names used for termcap descriptions:
boolcodes,
numcodes, and
strcodes.

Terminal Type

On initialization of the curses or terminfo interfaces,
setupterm copies the terminal name to the array ttytype.

Terminfo Names

In addition to the variables, <term.h> also defines a symbol for each
terminfo capability long name.
These are in terms of the symbol CUR,
which is defined

#define CUR cur_term->type.

These symbols provide a faster method of accessing terminfo capabilities
than using tigetstr(3X), etc.